Frog Design And Design Innovation in China

From smartphones to tablets, Wi-Fi to 3G/4G: I cover telecom & mobile.

Jan Chipchase spent a decade circling the globe as a trendspotting anthropologist for
Nokia
. His beat-up MacBook, its cover crisscrossed with strips of black electrical tape, stores the thousands of photos he takes during studies of street life in São Paulo, Seoul and Ahmedabad. The native Brit would weave his stories into behavioral insights that Nokia engineers might incorporate into its mobile phones.

A year ago Chipchase left Nokia to train his lens on China, the biggest market of all. His new employer is innovation consultancy Frog Design, where Chipchase is the executive creative director of global insights, based in its Shanghai studio. He still trawls alleys, subways and cafes taking lots of pictures, but his ethnographic approach is so new to Frog's Chinese clients that they don't always get what he's doing. Instead of disappearing into the field for months, he has to check in regularly. "Chinese companies are still figuring out our value offering," Chipchase explains. "There needs to be more feedback during the research phase."

Frog's 45-person Shanghai office is its newest outpost and is bustling and booked solid. Clients include
China Mobile
and Haier. One-third of its work is helping Western companies sell to China, what the firm calls its "China in" practice. Another third is "China around," or work for non-Chinese Asian firms. The last third is helping Chinese firms sell to international markets, or the "China out" side.

You can think of the latter operation as a school for China cool. Thanks to fast, cheap manufacturing, Chinese companies tend to rush out multiple products and see what sticks, says Chipchase. Most of the gear is bland. "Our Chinese clients know how to sell in China and export to India, Pakistan and their neighbors. It can be trucks on the highway, flogging the same thing. . . . Blasting loads of products doesn't work in international markets."

Frog, founded in 1969 by a trio of German industrial designers, employs 550 people in eight studios around the world. It brought the world the Trinitron television, the "Snow White" design scheme
Apple
used in the late 1980s, pop-up Tupperware containers, the HP TouchSmart computer and
Disney
-branded cellphones. Along with IDEO and Ziba, Frog is one of the handful of firms global brands turn to regularly on their way to a launch. It's an independently operated division of a company called Aricent, which was bought in 2006 by KKR.

Mark Rolston, the company's chief creative officer, says the Shanghai office is Frog's most important studio even though it accounts for less than 10% of its revenue (estimated to be $100 million). "In one way or another all our energy is pointed that way," notes Rolston. He estimates that within ten years the Shanghai studio will be Frog's largest, passing its San Francisco headquarters. "Shanghai is fighting to be the new San Francisco in terms of creativity and product innovation," he says.

The Chinese opportunity is intriguing enough to keep world traveler Chipchase in Shanghai. "I could be anywhere, but I wanted to be in China," he says. "In terms of the breadth of people coming to us and the ambitions of companies, we are seeing things that no other studio sees."

Frog is deep into a high-profile launch of a videoconferencing system due out later this year. It is an assignment from one of China's largest technology firms (Frog declined to say exactly which); the video device is supposed to establish a new market for the client and reposition the company as a premium brand.

The company, Frog's Shanghai strategy director, Ravi Chhatpar, explains, is well known in China and has "played in the West with moderate success" but wants to be associated with higher-end gadgets. Conscious of the frenetic nature of the consumer-electronics industry, Frog identified videoconferencing equipment as an area where the company could "do something great, have an impact for a few years and build up to the next step," says Chhatpar.

Though the product will ship without any mention of Frog, the firm's fingerprints are all over it. Once the initial idea was set, Frog selected features for the device and designed its look and feel. Since the product is being positioned as the first in a series of more upscale devices for this company, Frog created software that will also be able to run on other gadgets.

Shanghai took time to warm to Frog's methods. Chhatpar, who was the first Frog employee to move to China, in 2007, found that companies were eager to talk but often balked at formally hiring the firm, especially since Frog's fees can be three times those of Chinese design firms. It had no business from Chinese companies in the first six months.

In response Frog devised a compromise that it calls a teaser: a test project that gives a taste of the firm's research-intensive style but can be completed in a few weeks' time. A typical teaser might include an assessment of a company's current products, an analysis of competing products and a few ideas for new products. Sometimes the teaser is more research oriented, resulting in a document that outlines consumer preferences and market opportunities.

That is where Chipchase often steps in. When a company wanted a rundown of the latest trends in Tokyo, Taipei and Nanjing, Chipchase traveled to the cities, snapped pictures and produced a detailed report. Frog says the approach is more analytic and visceral than typical market research. "There's a sense of storytelling that comes from going and living in those moments and taking photos," says Rolston. "The designs that come out of Jan's work are tangibly different."

Sometimes Frog's value lies not just in connecting the dots but also in connecting partners. One Chinese client wanted to distribute a cellphone in Europe through a wireless operator but needed introductions to carriers. After Frog arranged some meetings, the phone got picked up by
Deutsche Telekom
's T-Mobile in 2009. Chhatpar says the deal was a step toward the client building a global smartphone brand similar to Taiwan's HTC.

It is that long-term vision that distinguishes Frog from regular design firms. When Frog assists with new products it does so with multiple years and specific branding goals in mind. It eventually wants to forge in China the same trusted adviser relationships it enjoys with U.S. firms like GE and HP.

Frog will need to prove itself first. "Companies in the West have had decades of this experimentation already," notes Chhatpar. "Chinese companies may need to see some of these products come to market and be successful first."

That transition means that not all of Frog's advice is heeded. Concerned about the "room acoustics" of the yet-to-launch videoconferencing system, Frog wanted to keep testing the device's microphone. The client balked at the time and expense required and ultimately chose a simpler design that didn't address the potential acoustics issue, says Rolston.

The Chinese government could help pave the way. In a sign of its ambitions for its homegrown brands, the government has invited Frog to participate in a five-year initiative on fostering creativity and innovation in China. The Chinese government has also started sponsoring housing for "global creative talent" and accepted two Frog employees as tenants.

Frog has begun applying knowledge gained in China to clients situated elsewhere. Rolston says a graphic designer from the Shanghai studio contributed "a unique sense of style" to Frog's recent work on redesigning
Microsoft
Office icons and packaging. With more China work than he can handle, Rolston's big concern echos that of many business leaders in China: Where can I find more talent?